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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24493870">Without Anne</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mille_libri/pseuds/mille_libri'>mille_libri</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:01:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,037</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24493870</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mille_libri/pseuds/mille_libri</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After an evening at Patty's Place, Gilbert contemplates a future without any Anne in it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Without Anne</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a smile, careless and light, on Gilbert Blythe’s lips as he closed the door of Patty’s Place behind him with a cheery “good-night” to all and sundry within. But it disappeared before he had gone two steps from the doorway, and by the time he reached the gate he had to stop, grasping the top of the gate for support, as the pain caused him to gasp for breath.</p>
<p>Would Anne ever know how much these evenings cost him? he thought despairingly. He came, and he sat with her and whoever else happened to drop in, and he spoke lightly and he laughed in the right places and he devoted more time to speaking with her chums than he did to her—but oh, how painfully aware he was of every movement she made, every light and shadow that crossed her face. </p>
<p>If only he could forget how white and distressed she had looked when she told him she could never care for him. Gilbert had known all along that she thought she was waiting for the ideal man of her girlish fantasies, but he had thought that when faced with love, real, honest, devoted love such as his, she would awaken to her true feelings. He had thought that even if she said no, there would be something in her eyes that would give him a reason to hope that someday she would come to see him as he saw her—as the only person in the world. But there had been nothing of that. Only grief and shock and unhappiness. He had gone away from Patty’s Place that day feeling that all the light and color had been stripped from the world, and it had been hard, so hard, to find a reason to get up the next morning.</p>
<p>Only studying medicine had made it worthwhile. If he could not have Anne, he would have work that mattered, that made the sick well and brought new life into the world and saw life out of the world with dignity and compassion. And that would have to be enough. Without Anne, there could be nothing more.</p>
<p>He hadn’t said anything to anyone, just as he had never spoken of the dream that filled his soul before he offered it to Anne. If he couldn’t tell Anne about his dreams and sorrows, who else was worth telling? </p>
<p>Gilbert made himself let go of the gate and walk down Spofford Avenue with a cheery whistle, although he felt as if he was walking on knives. Did she think of him when he was gone? Did she notice? He spent so much time trying not to watch her that he could never tell if her eyes rested on him when he wasn’t looking, if perhaps in the absence of their frank comradeship she had learned to wish for a deeper communion of souls in its place. But she never seemed to. She was quiet, aloof, distant, responding with surprise when he spoke to her and rarely directing a comment at him in specific. </p>
<p>If it weren’t for Phil Gordon, he would probably stop going to Patty’s Place. Not that he was at all interested in Phil in any personal way—she was too flighty for him, too showy, too much altogether, even if his heart wasn’t firmly in the possession of a certain slender starry-eyed narcissus next to whom any rose would look overblown. But Phil was fun to bandy words about with, and there was something in her big brown eyes when she looked at him looking at Anne that said she understood and sympathized. It gave him hope. If one of her closest friends could look at him like that, maybe Anne felt more than she let on. More, possibly, than she understood.</p>
<p>No fool he, Gilbert knew that there was something innocent in Anne’s heart that was as yet untouched by dreams of love more substantial than a castle in the air. That knowledge, the certainty of that innocence, was all that kept him going some days when the world seemed particularly bleak—the idea that possibly Anne would awaken someday and discover the veil torn from her eyes, see clearly that she did love, with all the depth and poetry of her fathomless soul, and that she loved him. They had been destined for one another, Gilbert thought, and it was that certainty that brought him back here regularly. Not too often, but often enough not to be forgotten.</p>
<p>He glanced back now, wondering if someday she would follow him. Today was not that day, and he had work to do this weekend, papers to work on and textbooks to study, and at the end of it the satisfaction of lessons conscientiously learned that would serve him well in the future. But the small room at his boardinghouse would be lonely and lacking in light because no more careless, funny, thoughtful little notes from Anne would find him there.</p>
<p>Sometimes he regretted speaking when he had, instead of waiting any longer. But he’d had to know—he couldn’t have gone on not knowing. And he had been so sure that the question, the revelation of his hopes and dreams, would awaken an answering set of hopes and dreams in her heart. He had been certain of it. </p>
<p>That moment in the orchard would come back to him the rest of his life, the coldness of her hand in his, he was sure.</p>
<p>Gilbert stopped a moment, looking up at the stars to banish the memory. Their ancient light lifted his spirits. There was still hope, he reminded himself. No one else ever appeared at Patty’s Place who had Anne’s frank and open friendship the way he had owned it once upon a time; no one else made her grey eyes starry or soft or tender or merry in any special way. And, barring that, there was still hope. He may not have found the words to unlock the secrets of her heart the first time, but there was time yet, and he might stumble on the right combination another day.</p>
<p>Or so he told himself, in order to make it through the night.</p>
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